2015

What will the future bring? Projection forward of current trends or complete mayhem?

I wonder how long this sorry gibberish will live on some server someplace. No way to know but throw it against the wall. And like a greasy bar rag, it'll leave a sticky trail of nastiness for some other sorry fool to clean up. Res Ipsa Loquitor. I think Charles Bukowski said that? I was listening to Mark Blyth's rap on a podcast and I have to say his smiting of the Austerity Cultists was impressive. What was frustrating to me was the he, like so many others with good intentions to try to ameliorate the condition of the working classes still operates under the assumption that strong growth is the way to get out of the mess global civilization's in. Sadly, I can only agree with those who say that growth economies are a dead end (barring interplanetary space flight - and, while I think that's desirable, we're ruled over by a lot of people who can't think past next quarter). You don't even have to believe in the peak oil idea to understand, if you'll be bothered to look at the situation objectively that there's not enough resources to sustain a market based, growth oriented consumer economy on a planetary scale. You can't promise all the people of India, China and Africa that they or their children will have even the standard of living of 19th century Europe. A lot of people cried 'wolf' a lot of times in the seventies about how resource depletion would take us all back to the 12th century. So here we are in the twenty-first and those who even remember the dire warnings of resource depletion versus the "Population Bomb" are sniggering behind their hands. They hoot and point their fingers at James Kunstler. "You heathen freak!" They howl, flinging their dung at the cassandra chained to the mast of the SS Peak Oil. And they're right in their way. Kunstler's vision of a world inhabited by neo-pagan Laura Ingalls-Wilder farmer types is about as realistic as any other polyanna paradise dreamed up by neo-hippy dreamers. Caught between these two poles however, what hope is there for those of us who sure could use some? more later...

Beria Lives!

It appears that Soviet hackers have put up a lot of personal information about members of the elite, such as Eric Holder's credit report. The idea is to show that The People can dig up dirt and surveil just as effectively as the elites themselves. It's a truth that the internet age has begun an arms race between authoritarian minded elites and free-thinkers. There's a decided mismatch in power of course. Monkeywrenching hackers can post embarrassing personal data on crabby bosses like Hillary Clinton and fascist creeps like Sarah Palin and get lolz from people like me. But here's the rub, and I hate to be a drag: Who sees it? And what to they do with it? I'm hearing reaction to the selection of the new pope in Rome and there is a section of the population that is absolutely wedded to authoritarianism. Dig up Elaine Chao's recent remarks about how American workers need to be more reflexively obedient. ( http://www.hillbillyreport.org/diary/4487/okay-all-of-you-lazy-a-american-workers-elaine-chao-thinks-you-need-angermanagement ) Add to this the fact that while some state media organs like the WaPo might make oblique mention of the episode of hackery, they will couch it in terms of 'how awful it is that irresponsible people can get their hands on your personal date'. Not the spirit the data dump was presented in by the NKVD or whatever agency of the USSR did it. I think the Bradley Manning episode demonstrated that Americans just can't get worked up over atrocities. If they ever could. There's a new book out on Vietnam focusing on the atrocities. Now I've been a fan of Noam Chomsky for a long time so none of this stuff is news to me. But aside from a little splash in lefty media (Democracy Now, Truthdig &c...), it's not going to lead to any reflection. It should, but it won't. There are many brave voices in the US military, but like any police agency, the wall comes up when dirty laundry gets aired. Deny, Deny, Deny. Then wait for the news cycle to shift to another mall shooting or rancor over some divisive social issue that doesn't involve mass shootings, suveillance and imprisonment. And so with Exposed.su. There used to be a saying in politics that once elected you could get away with anything provided you didn't get caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. Nowadays, thanks to crusading social activists you can get away with anything. Period.

Futurists have a dismal track record. The long list of shattered expectations is enough to fill a server farm in eastern Oregon. The fallback mode is to seize on some technical innovation and project current enthusiasms for it out to rediculous degrees. What's more useful to extrapolate from, I think is the interplay between novelties like tech gizmos like the internet and what appear to be constants, like powerlust. It's recognized that the first application of technology is usually geared toward killing other people in large numbers, extending domination of the mass of humanity by oligarchic cabals and the relentless extrication of natural resources from a worn out earth. I had the displeasure to grind through "Empire" by Negri and Hardt some years ago. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%28book%29) Despite the abstruse and turgid prose, they made their point well enough and I think they succeed in outlining the framework of the post WW2 settlement era. Just as the work of Metternich and Napoleon started to come unglued after 1848, so did the work of Churchill and Acheson become to fray badly after the reuniting of Europe after 1990.

However did I get ahold of this? I ran across the name by accident and found it abandoned if I recall it right. Such a great name. So I should possibly do something with it. Tomorrow...that's the future, right? Ho ho! I think possibly much sooner than that. It's occured to me I should look to see what the previous owner(s) were doing with it and have a go at keeping that ball in play. More soon.

The Secret Sun: Wizards, Workings and Walk-Ins: Watchers and Otherworlds

The Secret Sun: Wizards, Workings and Walk-Ins: Watchers and Otherworlds

Testing!